of that meeting. reid said that he found the meeting to be constructive as well as didnancypelosi. speakerboehner seemed to have a slightly different take, basically saying, look, we've already passed legislation in the house to deal with the sequester, to deal with some of these issues so why not revisit what was passed in the house? but the bottom line is the words that are coming out of this meeting, constructive, optimistic. there seems to be a little bit of movement. you always hesitate to say that because, of course, these talks could become derailed at any minute, but president obama set to address the press and the nation hopefully to give us a little bit of a better sense of how that meeting wrapped up. >> kristin, how do we square the sense of optimism and everyone saying that the talks were constructive when they're still stuck on the same points? if this hasn't moved on from $250,000 a year? >> reporter: correct. it's a very good point, and so the question is what can leader reid do, mitch mcconnell do within the next 24 hours to basically put together a compromise package? i

speakerpelosihadthe bill to fund the iraq war. our democratic caucus wasn't in support of that. nonetheless she put a bill on the floor where we had to fund the iraq floor. she did it because it was in the best interest of the american people. at the end of the day speaker boehner who is the speaker of the whole house has to do what is in the best interest and let the will of the house take its call. he has to move forward on this. you can't put the blame on the president. we need to go back to the speaker. >> republican congressman said this of john boehner's leadership today. >> the reason that boehnjohn bo has trouble isn't a lack of leadership, it is because he lets people participate which wasn't the case in the past. >> do you think this is true and what other options does boehner have to reach a compromise with the president? >> i think he is right. whenever you had whether nancy pelosi with his caucus or speaker boehner you have a lot of cats to herd. on these issues you have cats going different ways. the speaker may say one thing publicly and every member of congress

a consensus in the middle. does john boehner neednancypelosiinorder to get anything passed? >> reporter: yes, absolutely. no question about it. that became incredibly obvious when he couldn't even get his own republicans to effectively save them from themselves and at least have some political cover by voting to keep tax cuts in place for everybody except millionaires because they said they wouldn't help him with what they call a political ploy. i think that's true but actually talking to people on both sides of the aisle here, because the ball is now in the senate -- the senate's court, the feeling is that if they can kind of break the dam in the senate and if something actually passes, you've already seen over the past two days house republicans saying that they hadn't said before, if the senate passes something, we'll take it up. and if that's the case, the sort of betting is that with the help of the majority of the democrats, probably most of the democrats and maybe, you know, a few dozen or more republicans, that's how it would get passed. but, candy, it's still a big if, as we ju